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September 11th, 2021 
Awake Goy Palestinian health authorities are launching a vaccination drive for students aged 16-18 in the Gaza Strip as the territory contends with a third wave of coronavirus infections, on September, 1, 2021. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)
The Latest:
- 396,088 Palestinians tested positive for COVID-19; 359,973 recoveries; 4,053 deaths
- Of those who tested positive, 222,496 live in the West Bank, 144,179 in the Gaza Strip, and 29,413 live in East Jerusalem
- 1,154,286 Israelis tested positive for COVID-19, 1,063,507 recoveries; 7,321 deaths
Over the last week, COVID-19 has continued to rip its way across Palestinian cities and towns, with new confirmed cases steadily rising while the number of lab tests remain low, relative to what it was in early spring.
As a result of this depressed testing (due to lack of supply), the data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health isn’t showing a surge like we are seeing in other regions, but a closer look reveals the coronavirus is likely peaking at its highest rate of transmission yet.
The big picture: This week the Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila confirmed the delta variant was responsible for more than 90.9% of new COVID-19 cases. We know that this mutation is around two times as contagious as previous prevalent iterations of the virus.
Al-Kaila said today 1,202,045 in the West Bank and Gaza have been vaccinated, of whom 496,050 have received two doses. While this means only 10% of the population is fully vaccinated, if we consider around two weeks ago only 843,525 had received one dose, we can see the fruits of a health campaign to boost inoculations.
Health officials have now mandated vaccines for government employees and students, and are offering up to $200 in prize money to encourage taking the jab among skeptics. Persons living in Gaza who are over the age of 55 are eligible for the winnings, which will be selected from a lottery.
The surge is in the positivity rate
A data point that really caught our attention was the updated positivity rate on the lab tests that are run: 20.4%. Data analyzed from Our World in Data showed Palestine currently has the 18th highest positivity rate in the world.
Palestinian students get inoculated with a dose of the Covishield vaccine, at a school, in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on September 1, 2021. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)
Why is this number important?
In the absence of a robust testing system, it can be near useless to examine the rise of new confirmed cases. If there are only enough tests to show a fraction of the spread, we can’t accurately predict how aggressive transmission will be in the coming weeks. As result, experts often look at the share of tests that turn up positive within a country to show trends.
The WHO has identified a range of where the positivity rate should be. If it’s too high, it means testing is too low and a wider contagion is being masked.
“In general where testing has been done fairly extensively we’ve seen somewhere between 3 and 12% of tests being positive…we would certainly like to see countries testing at that level of ten negative tests to one positive as a general benchmark of a system that’s doing enough testing to pick up all cases,” the WHO’s Dr. Michael Ryan said last year at the outset of the pandemic.
That’s it for this week, have a great weekend.
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